Gesture systems (home sign) can appear in the absence of linguistic input

The sign languages of Deaf communities have sometimes been regarded as primitive communication systems and, the reasoning follows, as a precursor to spoken languages

Sign languages are not primitive and are in fact full natural languages with complex grammars

Nevertheless it is possible that sign languages, have features in common with manual precursors of spoken language

Is there a plausible mechanism by which primarily manual actions could have transformed themselves into vocal actions?

3Theories of language origins

Ding-Dong onomatopoeia is the source of the first words imitative sounds mimicking the sounds of the world around them.

Bow-wow imitation of animal sounds.

Pooh-pooh - sighs of pleasure, moans of pain, and other semi-involuntary cries, which then became the names of the phenomena

Uh-oh - warnings to other members of the human band.

4Theories (cont.)

Yo-he-ho - rhythmic chants and vocalisms uttered by people engaged in communal labour.

Watch the Birdie - communication became elaborated because humans found it advantageous to be able to deceive other humans. Since exclamations and vocalisms can involuntarily reveal your true mental state, humans learned to feign them in order to deceive others for selfish advantage.

Ta-ta - oral gestures that began in imitation of hand gestures that were already in use for communication.

5Historical Perspectives

there are actions of the mouth which are commonly performed under certain circumstances and which seem to be due to imitation or some sort of sympathy. Thus persons cutting anything may be seen to move their jaws simultaneously with the blades of the scissors. Children learning to write often twist about their tongues as their fingers move, in a ridiculous fashion.

Charles Darwin, The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals (1872)

6Henry Sweet

"Gesture .. helped to develop the power of forming sounds while at the same time helping to lay the foundation of language proper. When men first expressed the idea of 'teeth', 'eat', 'bite', it was by pointing to their teeth. If the interlocutor's back was turned, a cry for attention was necessary which would naturally assume the form of the clearest and most open vowel. A sympathetic lingual gesture would then accompany the hand gesture which later would be dropped as superfluous so that ADA or more emphatically ATA would mean 'teeth' or 'tooth' and 'bite' or 'eat', these different meanings being only gradually differentiated".

7Richard Paget

The earliest human language was a language of gestures, in which features originally made by hand were unconsciously copied by movements or positions of the mouth, tongue or lips.

Human Speech some observations, experiments and conclusions as to the nature, origin, purpose and possible improvement of human speech (1930)

8Morris Swadesh

The shape of objects is imitated in human gestures and from there passes into vocalisation. This is due to two circumstances. One is that in humans as in other primates, the lips are flexible and can be used to copy shapes, such as round or flat. The other is that the passage of air through spaces gives a resonance that is related to their shape e.g. a word like the Latin CAPIO I TAKE or English CAPTURE

the formation of the K sound at the back of the mouth, while the lips are open, is comparable to the open hand. The closing of the lips then is analogous to the fingers closing with the thumb as one takes hold of an object. Thus the pronunciation of the root CAPIO is like the action of taking. Of course not all words are to be explained in this way, in fact only a few. And yet the possibility that some words developed in this way is not denied by other qualities also evident in language.

9Allotts tests for these theories

Evidence that gesture historically preceded speech and that the gesture-language fairly precisely expressed, by shape and movement, the objects and events referred to

Evidence for a historical process by which those overt gestures were reflected, reproduced in miniature, in gestures particularly of the tongue and lips which were associated with the production of speech-sounds

There can be no evidence for this as a historical process and Paget presents little to explain or justify the hypothesis as a reasonable physiological speculation

10Allotts tests for these theories

Evidence that gesture historically preceded speech and that the gesture-language fairly precisely expressed, by shape and movement, the objects and events referred to

Evidence for a historical process by which those overt gestures were reflected, reproduced in miniature, in gestures particularly of the tongue and lips which were associated with the production of speech-sounds

There can be no evidence for this as a historical process and Paget presents little to explain or justify the hypothesis as a reasonable physiological speculation

Is there any contemporary evidence?

11Summary

Most of these writers suggest that the mouth actions themselves would share underlying imagery with the iconic manual gesture

In the absence of any plausible mechanism or historical evidence, the notion of a hand-mouth link remains as speculative as any other theory

12Signs and gestures

full human languages

used by modern humans with language-ready brains

But they share some features with gestures

common articulators

greater iconicity than spoken languages

How could a hypothesised highly iconic manual communication system have led to the creation of a vocal communication system in which the links between symbol and referent are for the most part arbitrary?

13The articulators of sign language

Not just manual there is a rich and complex role for other articulators body, face, and, in particular, the mouth.

The research reported here focuses on one subgroup of these mouth actions 'echo phonology

a repertoire of mouth actions not derived from spoken language

form an obligatory accompaniment to some manual signs in a range of sign languages

characterised by 'echoing' on the mouth certain of the articulatory actions of the hands.

These provide examples of a possible mechanism in the evolution of language by which the units of an iconic manual communication system could convert into a largely arbitrary vocal communication system.

15Neurobiological Perspectives

Studies of neurons in the monkey brain by Rizzolatti and colleagues since 1996 have identified mirror neurons, which fire when the animal observes another individual making specific movements (primarily for reaching and grasping)

The mirror system, in temporal, parietal and frontal regions, is part of a system specialised for perceiving and understanding biological motion

16Hand and mouth - Gentilucci

when humans are asked to open their mouths while grasping objects, the size of the mouth opening increases with the size of the grasped object

Grasping larger objects and bringing them to the mouth induces increases in the size of mouth opening and voice spectra of syllables pronounced simultaneously

Observing another individual grasping or bringing different sizes of objects to the mouth also affects the articulation of syllables

17The hand and the mouth shared actions

the anatomical closeness of hand and mouth related neurons in the premotor cortex may relate evolutionarily to the involvement of both in common goals

The relationship between mouth actions related to eating, and those found in spoken language, have been discussed in detail by MacNeilage

The major area of activation was perisylvian (superior temporal and inferior frontal) , with somewhat more extensive activation on the left than the right

These findings conform with other recent studies and confirm that silent speech can activate regions in deaf peoples brains that have been identified as auditory speech processing regions in hearing people.

36Does the perception of signs with mouthings (DM) differ from signs with no mouth (NM)?

If language (speech vs. sign) is the crucial reason for the more posterior activation found in BSL perception, then signs with disambiguating mouth and signs without mouth should be processed identically

On the other hand, if the articulators used determine the areas of activation, then DM and NM signs should differ, with more posterior activation for the NM signs

The data support the second alternative anterior activation characterised DM and posterior activation NM

These findings are very similar to those exploring distinctive patterns of activation when viewing hand and mouth gestures that are unrelated to sign language.

Sign language Knowledge of SL generates greater activation in posterior superior temporal regions, including Wernickes area, and greater activation in left than right cortical regions. Only when material can be linguistically processed does differential activation extend to the superior parts of the temporal lobe

Echo phonology The only condition to generate differential activation (Deafgt hearing) in frontal regions, including premotor regions. In line with mirror neuron theory, this condition requires signers to engage motor circuitry possibly because the mouth actions observed reflect those of the hands in their dynamic patterning.

One issue for those concerned with suggesting a link between gesture and word has always been how visually-motivated gestures could have been transformed into the largely arbitrary words of spoken language

Echo phonology provides evidence for a possible mechanism

46

the phenomenon appears to be fairly common across different sign languages (needs research in non-European sign languages)

the oral activities in echo phonology are themselves not visually motivated.

the inventory of elements looks very much like a system of maximal contrasts in a spoken language phonology

The oral components can be used in speech

fMRI suggests that echo phonology occupies an interestingly intermediate position between signs and words

47

This paper represents only a very preliminary exploration of echo phonology Further research may provide more insights into the origins of phonological structure in spoken language, and from that into the evolution of human language.

48Collaborators on the ECHO project

Nijmegen University

Els van der Kooij, Onno Crasborn, Annika Nonhebel, Wim Emmerik

Stockholm University

Johanna Mesch, Brita Bergman

UCL/City University London

Dafydd Waters, Bencie Woll, Rachel Sutton-Spence

49Collaborators on Imaging the deaf Brain

Cheryl Capek

Dafydd Waters

Bencie Woll

Mick Brammer

Ruth Campbell

Tony David

Philip McGuire

Mark Seal

Mairéad MacSweeney

Jordan Fenlon

Tyron Woolfe

Zoë Hunter

Steve Williams and the imaging team

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